Could the Cross Country franchise be improved?

[PHILIPE]

Didn't some services extend to Poole in the past?

Yes. Frequent services as ,much as 2-hourly until they were cut back to Bournemouth.

 

[swt_passenger]

Poole would be a better place to extended all the summer time journeys to, you'd have the tourist traffic for the town and also for people getting the ferry to the Channel Islands.

Why can't a 2 or 3 off-peak XC services be extended to Poole all year round?

Because the running time to Poole and back is almost as long as the turn round time at Bournemouth, and the existing timetable is fixed around places such as New St and Reading.

So because the only way of running a reliable timetable was to have an adequate turnaround allowing for late southbound trains, the service was cut back to Bournemouth.

This has probably been explained about half a dozen times in the last couple of years...

 

[The Ham]

There is the possibility (slim I admit, but probably not totally crazy) that all the 22x's with XC are replaced by bi-modal trains.

If we assume that they are 5 coach AT300's then they would have about 25% more seats than a 221. If there were replaced one unit for one unit plus 10 to replace the HST's then that could provide quite an uplift in capacity.

It's unlikely to happen as when a new TOC said to Voyager Leasing (VL) that there was no further need for their trains then VL would be stuck with a large fleet of trains with few suitable alternative options for them (possibly Chiltern in 2022?). As such VL could be forced into cutting their lease costs and/or reforming to longer unit lengths just to earn something from them (although that is risky as that would leave XC with two unit types and the following franchise could just ditch them anyway).

Although I could see the benefit of ditching them from XC to allow Chiltern to use them as a replacement for their loco hauled services and to allow the cascading of their DMU's (either internally or externally) to provide capacity or new journey opportunities (East West Rail short term and/or replacing the bubble cars).

I would guess that the Mark 3 coaches could require a substantial refresh at about 2022 and depending on what units there are available the 22x's could be a convenient alternative (as the refresh works can be done without impacting on the number of available units for operations).

 

[SpacePhoenix]

There is the possibility (slim I admit, but probably not totally crazy) that all the 22x's with XC are replaced by bi-modal trains.

If we assume that they are 5 coach AT300's then they would have about 25% more seats than a 221. If there were replaced one unit for one unit plus 10 to replace the HST's then that could provide quite an uplift in capacity.

It's unlikely to happen as when a new TOC said to Voyager Leasing (VL) that there was no further need for their trains then VL would be stuck with a large fleet of trains with few suitable alternative options for them (possibly Chiltern in 2022?). As such VL could be forced into cutting their lease costs and/or reforming to longer unit lengths just to earn something from them (although that is risky as that would leave XC with two unit types and the following franchise could just ditch them anyway).

Although I could see the benefit of ditching them from XC to allow Chiltern to use them as a replacement for their loco hauled services and to allow the cascading of their DMU's (either internally or externally) to provide capacity or new journey opportunities (East West Rail short term and/or replacing the bubble cars).

I would guess that the Mark 3 coaches could require a substantial refresh at about 2022 and depending on what units there are available the 22x's could be a convenient alternative (as the refresh works can be done without impacting on the number of available units for operations).

Would Chiltern need all of them? if they didn't would some be suitable for use by SWT for some of their services on the Waterloo-Exeter route?

 

[Class 170101]

Lack of stock would be a big factor.

Arguably West Coast would hand their Voyagers back. Don't forget the Voyagers used to work on both routes when Virgin operated both XC and WC franchises.

 

[Master29]

Would have to be overhaul of the Voyagers and (unlikely, I know) Increased capacity. Well the OP did say how things can be improved. The current layout on Voyagers is daft. Take away some of the room in the vestibules for seating for a start (Yeah I know, all been said x100 I bet).

 

[The Ham]

Would Chiltern need all of them? if they didn't would some be suitable for use by SWT for some of their services on the Waterloo-Exeter route?

If they took all the XC's 5 coach 221's and reformed them into 8 coach units (scrapped/stored/used for parts half the end coaches) that would be enough (11 units) to replace the Mainline loco hauled sets and the 4 coach 168's (assuming that they are permanently running doubled up. That then enables the 4 coach units (10 units) to strengthen other services and so on until the Bubble cars can be released by being replaced by some of their 2 coach DMU's.

Then with the stock capable of 125mph there could be an investigation into whether linespeeds could be increased over long enough sections to justify it (I.e. if it is just a "paper" exercise as the tracks are straight enough).

That would leave 35*4 coach units left, which could then be used (in part) for a once every two hour service between Waterloo and Exeter formed of 10 coaches (with broadly the same capacity an a 9 coach train formed of 159's). By my calculations you would need 4 units with 4 coaches to create one 10 coach unit, if you needed 6 long units then that would require 24 of the 35 short units.

There could be scope to form 3 further units as 9/10 coaches long if SWT then needed them for extensions to their services (I.e beyond Exeter). Alternatively Chiltern could gain a further 5 units wirh 7/8 coaches.

That would work well if the other half of the Exeter services tab as a shuttle to Salisbury where (by the mid 2020's the line could be electrified) EMU's then run the rest of the services into Waterloo.

The DMU shuttle could then be diverted to Westburry once the wires reach Yeovil with all the EMU services extended to there (although only half length part Salisbury as 50% of the other half run to Romsey via Southampton to replace the DMU's on the Salisbury 6 services with the other 50% of services running to Bristol once Bath to Salisbury is wired up).